Guidelines for an Effective Sales Promotion Activity

• Just like too much of advertising, today there are too many sales promotional offers going on for every type of product. This results in less effectiveness of the sales promotion activity. We must design some sales promotion which is attractive and meaningful, giving real benefits both to the receiver and to the company.
• The sales promotion must have a specific beginning and end date. Some sales promotions run forever. Such offers lose meaning after some time, because the receiver takes it for granted as the benefit is already discounted psychologically.
• Sales promotion is expensive. So, it must be handled carefully, weighing in all the impacts and options.
• Sales promotion must be combined with some other marketing activity, e.g. consumer promotion can be combined with advertising campaign, some event, exhibition or direct marketing exercise etc. Similarly, trade promotion can be used along with personal selling efforts of the company.
• We should avoid ridiculous sales promotions, e.g. Buy One Get Four Free. The customer understands that such promotions are not genuine and hence does not believe them. She looks at the product, the brand or the company with a doubt because of such unbelievable offers. Such gimmicks must be avoided.
• The FREE offers must be really free and not any play of words to trap the customer. Some companies give free holiday offers to the customers, with some conditions. These conditions mean that finally the customer pays more than a reasonable amount for the FREE holiday, because the conditions make it compulsory for the customer to buy some unreasonably priced fixed rate meals or pay for some exorbitant service charges etc. So, the customer realizes in the end that she was taken for a ride. Once bitten, she will never trust our brand and will malign our brand by telling others. Such gimmicks end up causing a lot of negative word of mouth and damage to our brand. We must avoid gimmicks in the name of sales promotion. Only a true, genuine and real sales promotion helps the brand and the company.
• In the initial days of a brand, visibility and shelf space are more important along with initial sales. For this, trade promotions must be used more aggressively. Remember, the retailer has the maximum opportunity to convince the customer because the customer comes to him and is going to buy soon. If we can win the retailer, our work becomes easy, even if we are new to the market. Some brands use trade promotion so well, that they have made retailers their virtual sales force members. The retailers push the product very well, making it impossible for other brands to enter the market.
• The design of the sales promotion should be such that it rewards the customers for buying more and for being loyal to the brand or the company.
• The purpose of the sales promotion must be to gain new customers for long term relationship and not for one time sales opportunity.
• The final impact of the sales promotion must be visible in the increased value perception in the minds of the customers and not only in reduced price.

(Expert advice to GROW your business wherever you are, whenever you want.

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